From my perspective I believe that any hosted software platform, mls or not, should be functional on as many browser and operating system platforms as possible. Our current solution only works with IE and I personally have heard from a number of our members that they are not happy with this and would prefer that the MLS platform be cross-browser and cross-platform accessible. Each time I bring this up though I am told that Browser support should not be a decision factor in choosing an MLS platform.
This may be off topic but what sparked my thoughts on this article was that I was just checking out the stats from November 2007. We had just under 300 unique visitors to the blog (lots of repeats) during that period. What really interested me was the percentage of Mozilla Firefox users.
Approximately 50% of the unique visitors we had in November used Firefox!! Now why do I find this interesting? Simple I am consistently being told that Firefox/Mozilla is only used by a very narrow band of users in the RE community those typically “more savvy than your average agent”. Now I can make a legitimate assumption that this number is probably skewed because the people who read my blog are probably more internet savvy than the “average” agent though I think that profile is shifting as well.
Michael Wurzer if you are reading I would be interested in seeing what the distribution of browsers used on Flex as I know you all are cross platform capable.
To you 50% who are not yet using Firefox I would encourage you to give it a try. The primary reasons that I prefer Firefox are because of its extensibility and its security. Firefox extensions are awesome, frankly I don’t know how I used a browser without this functionality. The other reason I prefer Firefox is their focus on security. Where IE attempts to hide their problems in plain site Firefox opens the issue up to the community and is transparent about the issue and the area of effect. This same focus also extends to performance issues. Consequently the browsing experience is always improving and becoming more secure both of which cannot be said IMHO about IE.
MLS Service providers this section is for you:
Wake up and realize that the world has shifted; more and more people have moved from IE to Firefox and everyday people are migrating from Windows to an alternative operating system (the other day we got an Ubuntu machine in our repair center and the client was over 50). Standards are there for a reason and while browsers each have their own way of displaying the standards (by God I hate IE6) if your application works in IE7 then there is no reason that it should not work similarly in Firefox. In closing I understand that it is important to develop towards a core audience but developing for that audience exclusively is creating a growing market opportunity.
To the RE.net in general
My question to you is this. Is it better to have a platform that has a wider range of capabilities and focuses on one browser and operating system platform to ensure that these features are accessible and functional. Or is it better to sacrifice features to ensure compatibility with the widest range of browsers and operating systems available.
Nice post Mark. Just to chime in, the phenomenon is so bad in some circles that it almost feels like what the vendor has authored is not an MLS but a customized proprietary web browser that connects to a property database.
The browser SHOULD NOT be more central to the MLS experience than the MLS itself!
Wait, did I actually just have to say that? Well, hopefully those I have in mind heard it… unless my post can’t be read on their browser???
[…] A lot. More and more of what we do is online. Mark has already written an excellent article on whether browser compatibility should be a factor in choosing an MLS. It is that important; your browser is your window to the online world. And despite all the claims […]
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